I read that the while part is ignored after it’s run, which seems strange to me, since every other language I have used checks that line every time. That’s why the line that reads if choice == 0: break is necessary.

If I ever figure it out, I’ll update this post. Conversely, if anyone can push me in the right direction, the comments on this post are open.

UPDATE: I was checking the choice variable incorrectly. The raw_input is actually coming in as a string, which would be checked like this:

ifchoice=='0':break

Or, you can force it as an int, like so…:

choice=int(raw_input())

…and use the original integer check, which might be safer. You can also use float() in order to force input to be converted into a floating point number.

In my defense, I haven’t worked with a strictly-typed language in years, so this is a nice refresher. I’m posting this because I’m told that Python is a good programming language for novices and I know that when I was fairly novice, I needed help understanding typing. More on this later, I suppose.